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John Liebenberg

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Exhibitions

SOLO SHOWS

2011
Weekends at the Okomboni, John Muafangejo art centre Windhoek, Namibia

2008
John Liebenberg Photo exhibition, Goethe Institute / Iwalewa- haus Nairobi, Kenya

1994
Namibia of today, The French cultural centre, Windhoek, Namibia
Photographic Encounters, Paris, France
Namibia of Today, Bamako, Mali

1993
Democracy you cannot eat, The State Archive, Bremen, Germany

1991
The Marriage, an exhibition of post independent Namibia, The Namibian arts association, Windhoek, Namibia
Namibia, The red factory, Zurich, Switzerland
Namibia, The Eye, Geneva, Switzerland
The eye of the elephant, Vienna, Austria
The eye of the elephant, The Baxter Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

1990
The eye of the elephant, Namibian arts association, Windhoek, Namibia
Independence exhibition India, Department Arts and Culture Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia
The eye of the elephant, The great hall , University of the Witwatersrand, for the SA Institute of International affairs, Johannesburg, South Africa
Photographs from Namibia, for the ECC, East London, South Africa

1989
The Rainy season, The Market Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

1988
Images of Today, Swakopmund, Namibia

GROUP SHOWS

2017
A Short History of South African Photography, Time Maps. Memory, Archive, Future, Fotografia Europea , Reggio Emilia, Italy

2016
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Pioneer Works, New York, USA

2015
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Afronova, Somerset House, London, UK

2014
The Rise and Fall of Apartheid , International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, USA, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy, Museum Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa.
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Afronova, Somerset House, London, UK
Every one hundredth of a second, Windhoek, Namibia.

2013
Both sides, Res Gallery, Johannesburg , South Africa
Mekondjo, Portraits of PLAN veterans with Christo Doherty, Grahamstown National Arts festival, Grahamstown, South Africa

2012
Whose war was it anyway, Michaelis Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

Publications

THE AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE
English
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
April 2015

RISE AND FALL OF APARTHEID
English
Published by Prestel
2013

BUSH OF GHOSTS
English
Published by Umuzi
2011

ANTHOLOGY OF AFRICAN AND INDIAN OCEAN PHOTOGRAPHY
English (also exists in French and Portuguese)
Published by Revue Noire
1999

NAMIBIA
English
Published by Revue Noire
1994

Press

Focusing on Photo Portraits at New York’s Contemporary African Art Fair, Hyperallergic, May 2016

A Preview of this Week’s 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair New York, Okay Africa, May 2016

South Africa’s hottest artists at 1:54 New York this Week, The South African, May 2016

A Failure of Memory, guernica, a magazine of art and politics, June 2015

The 10 best … of Rise and Fall of Apartheid, news 24, September 2014

Liebenberg and Figueira team up for a tour de force exhibition, the namibian, February 2014

Apartheid in Manhattan: The International Center for Photography’s “Rise and Fall of Apartheid”, africasacountry.com, April 2013

Namibia: The Internal Struggle for Independence – 1985-1989, video, April 2011

Born in 1958 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa

He was introduced to Namibia in 1976 when, together with his fellow conscripts he was sent to Ondangwa Air-force base near the border with Angola. He later returned to Namibia and in 1985 was appointed photographer for a new weekly, ‘The Namibian’.

Following independence he and his family moved to Johannesburg, from where he covered the Angolan civil war as freelancer for Reuters. He later joined Media 24 magazines mostly working for Drum. He is a senior and established news photographer whose work has been exhibited in Africa and Europe. His Namibian photographic collection documenting Swapo’s war of Liberation and the South African occupation is widely used by historians, researchers and film makers.